Both Chrome and Chromium are now manageable through Group Policy objects on Windows, plist/MCX configuration on Mac, and special JSON configuration files on Linux. We polished up the NTLM and Kerberos protocol support, and created a list of supported policies and administrative templates to help administrators deploy.

This is good news for companies willing to switch from IE to chrome, but for those sticking to IE we still have the nochrome-vendor-version lock-in. And this is the greatest problem: how do you switch to a modern browser, if you must run several applications in IE? The answer is simple: you switch the rendering engine inside IE, but not for all applications, just for those explicitly asking for it:

For users needing access to older web applications not yet qualified for Chrome, we also developed Chrome Frame, an Internet Explorer (TM) plug-in that provides Chrome-quality rendering for the broader Web, while defaulting to host rendering for any web applications that still require IE.

This way, IE will work as always, but if some page adds a simple html or http header, google chrome will do the rendering of the page, inside IE. Users donâ€™t have to switch from one browser to another, and the IT department can rollout one web application upgrade after another, without compromising legacy apps.

Microsoftâ€™s urging to upgrade to IE8 appears to be partially in response to the German and French governmentsâ€˜ recommendation that people stop using Internet Explorer altogether due to its security vulnerabilities.

Microsoftâ€™s announcement said: â€žIt is important to note that all software has vulnerabilities and switching browsers in an attempt to protect against this one, highly publicized, but currently limited attack can inadvertently create some false sense of security. Moreover, IE8 has other built-in security protections, such as the SmartScreen filter, that other browsers do not have that protect against real consumer threats, such as socially engineered malware and phishing attacks.â€œ

If a resource (especially a downloadable file) changes, change its name. That way, you can make it expire far in the future, and still guarantee that the correct version is served; the page that links to it is the only one that will need a short expiry time.